Photo Credit: Basil Vargas 

Lionel Deguzman, the singer/songwriter mastermind behind Lionel Boy, hails from Hawaii, one of the chillest places on Earth. Clearly the laid-back island vibe stuck with him, even after his move to his current home base of Long Beach several years back, as the first single from his self-titled debut album (Out May 14th on Innovative Leisure) demonstrates. 

“Mango Michelada” delivers a satisfyingly chilled-out, mildly psychedelic downtempo groove, with a minimal but assured beat draped by gauzy synth pads, while the breezy male/female “call and response” vocals amp up the sense of absolute cool. Overall, the impression is of a track that falls somewhere with within rap, RnB, ambient and psychedelic music all at once. 

Lyrically, the track is a softly stream-of-consciousness recollection of a past love that ended in betrayal. “All my life I’m fuckin’ with savages/looking for love in the wrong places,” sings the female vocalist, at first by herself with only the synths framing her. When Lionel Boy joins in to double her, just as the full arrangement returns, it’s a genuinely relatable moment of emotion that make us eager to hear what Lionel Boy has in store for us with his coming debut. Gabe Hernandez

Lionel Boy is a new signee to LA label Innovative Leisure, coming to Long Beach by way of Hawaii. His first release, the EP Who Is Dovey?, introduces his style which fuses grunge, shoegaze, and early 2010s dream pop together into an original form of darkwave. The first video released from the project is for the track "Lost", which mixes home video footage to the beat as it shifts from laid back and pondering to intense and cathartic. The full EP drops on June 26th, but you can check out the video for "Lost" below. - Will Sisskind